Welcome Back, Daniela

Daniela Pulice, our intrepid Library Director, returns full-time to work today (Tuesday September 30) after a part leave, part-time schedule, resulting from the birth of her second child.  It is great to have her back full-time, although Valerie Britton has done an excellent job holding the fort for the past six months. 

When I first went came to the Pleasant Valley Free Library in 1995 as a volunteer on the desk, we had an excellent Library Director, Carol Donick, but she was soon lured away by a much higher salary in Garrison, where she continues as Director to this day.  The Pleasant Valley Library Board of Trustees found a recently retired telephone employee who had obtained an Masters in Library Science (a requirement if you want state funding) so that he could have a second career and appointed him Director.  He soon discovered that he could not live on the tiny salary that we could offer and resigned. Shortly before his resignation, I joined the Board.  The next two years consisted of search periods, during which we had Acting Directors, and two more short-lived Directors. Soon after I became Board President, I was also on the search for a new Director.

The Library was by then in a much better position than we had been for some time. One of the main reasons that we had gone through four Directors in the space of five years was lack of income.  But in 1999, largely through the efforts of Trustee Steve Mac Nish, the voters of Pleasant Valley had awarded the Library secure annual funding. As the first Board President after passage of the new Town funding, I was able to offer potential new Directors a salary that was competitive with other Library Directors in the Mid-Hudson system.  Our search committee of several Trustees and volunteer Nancy Lundgren narrowed the candidates down to two, and the Board chose to hire a young woman who had been working at a branch library in the Bronx, Daniela Pulice.

Daniela has been Director now for eight and a half years, through her marriage, the birth of her two children, and occasional job tenders from other libraries.  During that time the library has grown in many ways, but her goal today is for that growth in services to have available some much-needed space--about double the size of the current building.  The plan for our building expansion was created by Daniela working with our architect and reflects her view of the Pleasant Valley Library of the future. We all hope that it is the near future.